Nonviolent Struggle

Theories, Strategies, and Dynamics

From Gandhi's movement to win Indian independence to the Arab Spring uprising of 2011, an expanding number of citizens have used nonviolent action to achieve political goals. While such events have captured the public imagination, they have also generated a surge of scholarly interest in the field of nonviolence and civil resistance. The author provides a comprehensive introduction to the field, detailing its genesis, key concepts and debates, and a summary of empirical findings. Nepstad depicts the strategies and dynamics at play in nonviolent struggles and analyzes the factors that shape the trajectory and outcome of civil resistance movements. She also describes both principled and pragmatic nonviolent traditions and explains various categories of nonviolent action. The book draws on a wide range of historical examples, including the U.S. civil rights movement, the Indonesian uprising against President Suharto, the French Huguenot resistance during world War II, and Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers.